Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 18-minute talk, Ven Jampa Ignyen addresses a subtle pitfall in practice: mistaking increased effort for faster progress. He opens with two striking stories—a meditator unable to clear thorn bushes blocking his cave because his practice consumes all his time, and Monk Sona whose walking meditation bloodied his feet—both ending with the Buddha’s instruction to ease up. He then explores lung (wind) in Tibetan medicine and yogic anatomy: excess wind-energy in the subtle channels manifests as anxiety and overthinking. Remedies include breathing meditation, compassion practice, or even meat and alcohol (used carefully as medicine). Throughout, he emphasizes sustaining a practice you enjoy—you cannot force yourself into Dharma like a reluctant horse. A practical, conversational teaching on rhythm in spiritual life.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 DA 2001 06 10.mp3
UUID: 2a013daa-5503-40fc-86a8-cf78f2d741a5
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Dependant Arising (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-06-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 18.2 minutes
Words: ~1,798
That’s right. There was a story of a monk who such a good practitioner that he lived in a cave. And every time he walked out, left the cave, and every time he entered the cave, he’d brush past this thorn this big thorn bush, and he’d scratch himself, get stuck with thorns. But he was such a good practitioner that all he ever he just had time to go out and relieve himself and go back inside. He had no time to get rid of the thorn bush because his meditation was progressing so well.
Very good practitioner. We’re not quite at that level yet, but we aspire, you know, at some time in the future to get to that type of level. But in the meantime, we need patience with ourselves as well. We do need to know when to relax and put these things to one side. Of course, they’re important issues, but as I think what one Chinese minister once said, even gold dust can blind one if it gets in the eye.
Partially, the meaning there is that, you know, having come across Dharma, you know, to then be over enthusiastic, throw it in the air or whatever, may not be that productive. We have to be very practical. Dharma is valuable, but we need to take it easy as well. We need to be able relax and sit back. There’s also another story at the time of the Buddha about a monk called Sona, and he was so delicate that he had hair growing on soles of his feet.
Sorry? Anyway, he became he took ordination. And one day the Buddha was walking around in the forest and he saw these blood stains on the forest floor and he started following them and he came to Sona. And Sona was practicing so hard that day and night he was practicing walking meditation. And to the extent where he had, you know, all his feet were cut, but he was still, you know, practicing walking meditation.
So he had to advise Sona to just take it easy. You don’t have to, you know, put too much effort into your practice. So we’re like that as well. We live in a society here and we’ve got lots of other commitments as well. So, we need to put effort into earning a living and then also some effort into our practice.
But we need to do it in a way where we can maintain the level for the long term. That we can be practicing in another ten years or twenty years. Because it’s going to take, let’s face it, if we get a result, if we start to see an improvement in thirty, let’s say in twenty years, then that’s okay, good. Okay, thirty years. We have we?
We’ve only got this moment. I know. True. True. But still well, we do need to be relaxed in our practice.
That is important. Like the guitar, like the lute, we can’t tighten the strings too much. We need to ease off on that. We can’t practice like Milarepa, for instance. Why not?
Well, probably if we could we would already be out there practicing like Milarepa. Potentially we can, but we still need to get to that level, say of Milarepa. Are you saying that there is a real danger of cracking? Oh, we get lung. Is everyone aware of lung?
Lung is, in Tibetan, lung means wind. Not wind. Not, wind in the bow. That’s right. Here it means a subtler level of wind.
Well, we do tend to get lung anyway. We’re susceptible to getting lung. Two of the medicines for lung are alcohol and meat. And actually, this can be related to our culture. Medicines.
Sorry? Lung well, from the point of view of Tibetan medicine, there’s three bases of disease, wind, bile, phlegm. So wind is actually, generally on a subtle level, it’s talking about the winds in the channels and in the smaller channels. Now, a yogic point of view, as human beings born in the Southern Continent from the six elements, we have winds, we have channels that make up our physical body, this subtle, type of subtle form. And so we have a central channel and a right and a left channel, and we have channel wheels, say the crown, at the throat, between the eyes, at the heart, at the navel and so on.
Chakras. Yeah. Wheels are chakras. And in those wheels, the wheels actually are like veins of subtle, subtle form in which wind energy does flow. And at times, if we think too much about things, we get an excess of wind.
And if that happens, then we should do something that sort of decreases our wind a little bit, brings our wind down a bit. This is a Tibetan way of looking at this particular situation. Sorry. Pende has a little bit of sog lung. Also, this is something that happens quite naturally to us from time to time.
We get a bit of lung that’s heading into that. At times we feel a bit anxious about things. That’s how most of the Western world lives. Yeah. So, it said that when that alcohol and meat is can be useful.
A beer and a meat pie. A beer and a meat pie. Someone was talking about beer this morning, I think, too. And You think the wrong medicine? Lots of red meat.
Of course, the Tibetans like to eat lots of meat as well. It does tend to decrease the winds a little bit. And sometimes it can be useful. Also, breathing meditation is also very good. Just to stop and sit.
It’s not easy because from time to time we do have an excess of thoughts about things. Breathing meditation is one way of quelling our thoughts. We just sit down and sit in a quiet corner and just relax and just watch the breath a little bit. It can be very useful, even for one minute, two minutes. Just give up those thoughts, just let them go.
Oh, they come back. When they come back, let them go again. Oh, that also is very good. Yes, that’s purifying. That’s also very good for balancing the winds.
Yeah, definitely. Otherwise we’d go out and have a steak with prayers to the animal. Or otherwise, you know, a stiff whiskey or something like that. But of course, in moderation, these are only recommended as medicine. And if we have too much, it doesn’t become a medicine any longer, of course.
But probably breathing meditation is really the best. And then thinking about compassion for other beings also is very good. You know, we feel anxious and so on, we have a day when we’re really feeling out of sorts, then just to sit down and contemplate compassion. Very, very beneficial. And that is reflecting on others and may they be free of suffering.
That really does help to settle the mind. In fact, anyway, we can investigate ourselves what’s useful because everyone’s different and different techniques are going to work for different people. Oh, yeah. Well, as long as you’re not attached to the football, no problem. No.
Also, it’s useful that we do things that we like to do as well, for whatever reason. I mean, as long as we like what we like to do for whatever, you know. They should be legal for a start. Because we need to have a level of happiness when we are practicing. We need to like what we are doing.
If we don’t like it, we are not going to do it. Even though we like the idea, if we don’t actually like the practice, we’re like the horse being led to water. Our owner would even put our mouth into the water and we’d pull our head out and shake the drops off. We need to like what we are doing. We need to like the practice.
Therefore, we need a certain level of happiness in what we are doing. That’s very important. Could you please explain what the lung is that can mean by a lama? Oh, that’s a different spelling. Is it?
Yeah. That’s Lung, rlung, l u n g. As opposed to what’s the lung which is o n g? R l u n g. Sorry?
R. R l u n g. Oh yeah, well that’s a transmission of type, yeah. So what is that? That’s the rlung.
Elaine is just talking about two types of lung here And one is the Tibetan word for transmission and the other is the Tibetan word for wind. So which one is which? One without the l u n g is the transmission. The other one is the wind. Perhaps even some of our wind is transmitted as well.
Oh, three levels of vows. I think that’s the individual emancipation vows or the pratimoksha, the bodhisattva vows or bodhisattva morality, and the tantric morality. So, those three. Oh, you just there’s three anyway. In English?
In English. Okay. The first level is that of individual liberation. Liberation. Those vows that will serve as a basis for attaining liberation for ourselves.
And the second is bodhisattva morality or bodhisattva bodhisattva vows, which serve as the foundation for becoming a bodhisattva. And then tantric morality or tantric vows, which are the precepts by which one attains the supreme enlightenment in a tantric vehicle. Which is Buddhahood. Anyway, it is useful to know, guys. Yes, yes.
Depending on which level of initiation you take. No. Well, generally bodhisattva vows definitely you take. So bodhisattva vows have root vows and secondary vows. What is it?
Eighteen root, forty six secondary? They should be maintained. And so on. If you’ve taken the highest level, then you also have tantric vows. The vows?
Lama Zopa Rinpoche would be the one to request. Gradually, as our practice develops, then it’s possible that we can give vows and so forth, give initiations. In fact, we need to do this. But slowly, slowly. No hurry.
Okay. Well, we might just leave it there for today. So we’ve just done as far as ignorance so far. We’ll go a bit more quickly through the others. But really, the deeper we go into these issues, the more difficult they are.
But gradually, we need to investigate these on a deeper level. So we should recite the dedication. And it is on page number twenty two. So through the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the supreme jewel bodhicitta that has not arisen.